Dallas hides serious value behind its corporate skyline: two world-class art museums charge nothing, the M-Line trolley has been free since 1989, and Jefferson Boulevard serves plate lunches under $10. Three days here can cost less than one Uptown dinner.
General admission has been free since 2013, covering 25,000 works from Egyptian antiquities to Jackson Pollock. Open 11:00-17:00 Wed-Sun (Thu until 21:00 on late nights). Free lockers, free WiFi and a courtyard where you can eat food brought in.
A 5-acre deck park built over the sunken Woodall Rodgers Freeway, open 06:00-23:00 daily with no entry fee. Free WiFi, free ping-pong and chess sets from the kiosk, free fitness classes most mornings, and 15-20 food trucks parked along Olive Street.
Thanks-Giving Square's spiralling white chapel by Philip Johnson houses a Gabriel Loire stained-glass ceiling and charges nothing to enter, open 09:00-17:00 weekdays. The surrounding sunken plaza and water gardens are open to all hours.
Restored 1900s streetcars run Uptown to the Arts District entirely free, funded by a public improvement district. Cars named Rosie, Petunia and Matilda run roughly every 20 minutes, 07:00-22:00 weekdays and until midnight Fridays and Saturdays.
The indoor Market hall opens 10:00-17:00 daily with no entry charge, mixing produce stalls with counter-service stands. Breakfast tacos run $2.50-3.50, kolaches under $3, and vendors hand out samples of Texas pecans, salsa and honey.
A ten-block Mexican-American commercial strip where taquerias like Tortilleria La Nueva and El Ranchito sell three tacos for around $6. Panaderias sell conchas at 90 cents; the Texas Theatre where Oswald was arrested anchors the east end.
Around 60 independent shops in a walkable four-block grid south of the Trinity, free to wander. Window-shop vintage at Dolly Python, browse murals on Bishop and Seventh, and grab a $4 scoop at Sweet Firefly rather than a sit-down meal.
Most Elm and Main Street bars run 16:00-19:00 specials with $3-5 draft pints and half-price appetisers. Braindead Brewing and Deep Ellum Brewing Company pour local beer cheaply, and several music venues waive cover before 21:00.
A 3.5-mile rail-to-trail greenbelt on the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas line, open sunrise to sunset with no fee. Shaded concrete and soft-surface lanes run from the American Airlines Center to Knox Street through Uptown's tree canopy.
The old Continental Avenue bridge is now a car-free park deck with hammocks, shade sails and the sharpest free view of the Santiago Calatrava-designed Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and the downtown skyline behind it.
The largest bronze monument of its kind: 49 longhorn steers driven by three cowboys across a landscaped hillside, installed 1994. Always open, never ticketed, and adjoining the Confederate-era Pioneer Cemetery where early Dallas settlers are buried.
West Dallas levee paths give an unobstructed downtown skyline panorama for nothing, the budget alternative to a paid observation deck. Reunion Tower's dome and the Bank of America building's green outline light up around dusk.